Sum of These Parts
by 33whiteroses
Summary: Because the road twists and turns, but it somehow leads back to that same place. SeanEllie.


**A/N**: This was written in celebration of the 100th Sean/Ellie thread on the Degrassi message board on I'm not sure if I'm happy with the way it turned out, but hey, I had to give Sean and Ellie some a happy ending because heaven knows the writers aren't going to. Minor spoilers and speculation for season six lie within. Feedback appreciated!

* * *

So, there's university.

There's classes and dining halls and campus and an editor who's kind of cute. And there's living with Marco, which is the most fun she's ever had sharing an apartment with someone.

Well, second most fun.

* * *

She's out with Alex at a bar. Ellie had suggested a gay bar, trying to show Alex that she's cool with the whole lesbian thing, but Alex just rolled her eyes and said that she wouldn't mind dudes buying her a few beers.

Which makes Ellie kind of wonder about the whole liking-chicks thing.

Alex takes three calls in the first hour, and all of them last no longer than thirty seconds. Something clicks in Ellie's mind.

"Is that Jay? Are you talking to Jay?"

Alex sips her beer and stares straight ahead.

"I thought you hated Jay."

"Things change."

"I thought you were a lesbian."

"Things change."

* * *

Turns out two young girls sitting in a bar can do pretty well on the whole "free drinks" thing.

"So I was the flag girl! In a fucking drag race! Can you believe that shit?" Alex is swaying back and forth on her bar stool. Or maybe she isn't. Ellie can't really tell.

"Last call!" The bartender glances at them. "Anything else, ladies?"

Alex laughs, and then falls off her bar stool. Ellie's pretty sure she didn't imagine that part.

* * *

So it turns into a weekly thing. Beer, loud music, and the ongoing saga of Alex and Jay, part II. It usually takes about seven beers before Alex stops denying that she likes him again.

"I just don't know, though." Some nights she gets mean, some nights she gets emotional. Tonight, alcohol has made Alex introspective. "I mean, he fucked around on me, with Amy. And Emma. Stupid slut."

"Jay fucked Emma?" This is news to Ellie, who on her third beer has not yet caught up to Alex.

"Something like that." Alex sighs and takes a long drink. "She ruins everything, huh? I mean, you must want to kick her ass. Now that her and Sean are back together."

Ellie doesn't actually remember dropping her glass. But she hears a crash and she's no longer holding a beer, so it must've been her.

* * *

The next morning (okay, 2:30 the next afternoon), when she wakes up with a headache the size of Alberta and a liver that is actively planning on revolting against her body, she has four new voicemails.

"Um, Ellie? Hey, it's Sean. Um, I... I got your message. I'm -- I'm sorry you're mad, I guess. Um, you sounded a little drunk, so maybe you don't remember -- yeah. If you want to talk, or something I guess -- uh, never mind. Sorry. Bye."

"Nash! Didn't know you had the balls. Don't worry, you called the wrong phone, but I let Emma hear the message. Think you made her cry. You and Lexi need to get drunk more often."

"El? It's Ash. Look, I overheard Sean and Jay talking, and I know it probably isn't true but... look, you didn't drunk dial Sean, right? Tell me you didn't drunk dial Sean. Call me. I'm sure it's a misunderstanding."

"Ellie? It's Sean again. Look, you're obviously really upset, so maybe we could... um... actually, never mind. Ignore this."

When Marco gets home at six, he finds her curled up on the end of the couch, eating her second pint of Rocky Road. Her cell phone is in six different pieces around the living room.

* * *

By the time Craig rolls back into town, Alex and Jay have both stopped kidding themselves. Bar night is still a girls-only affair, but Ellie finds herself seeing Jay at least twice a week.

This isn't necessarily a good thing.

"Jay, if you take one more french-fry off my plate, you will feel my wrath. That's a promise."

"Aw, is that your bedroom voice?"

"Call Alex again."

"She's only five minutes late, calm down. Plus, this way we can bond." He leans over to take another french-fry. Ellie closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and when she opens them, Craig Manning is standing next to the table.

* * *

Vancouver was great, the band is great, Manny... Manny is not so great.

They sit on a ratty couch on his basement and talk until four in the morning. As she drifts off to sleep, he reaches over and holds her hand.

She dreams of freshly bleeding cuts lacing the pale skin of her arms.

Marco says it won't last six months. She throws a shoe at him and tells him he doesn't know shit.

* * *

Turns out Marco _does_ know shit, but he's nice enough not to say so. He lets her cry and agrees with her that musicians can't commit and reassures her that of course they'll stay friends.

* * *

On Jay and Alex's one year anniversary, Ellie goes out to a club with them. She wasn't going to, but Alex insisted and even Jay was less assy than usual, telling her that they really did want her there.

She sips a beer and feels depressed. Two guys ask her to dance and she says no, keeping half an eye on Jay and Alex grinding on the dance floor.

On her way to find the restrooms, she accidentally bumps into a couple making out. Rolling her eyes, she keeps walking.

Under fluorescent bulbs, reapplying her lip gloss in a cracked mirror, it vaguely occurs to her that she just saw Emma Nelson making out with Toby Isaacs.

She doesn't tell Alex. But she does dance with a few guys, and even allows Jay to twirl her around while Alex buys shots.

* * *

The weird thing is, they do stay friends.

Sure, she refuses to call him for the first month, just on general principle. But eventually, with Marco nudging her along, she sends him an email.

He doesn't write back. He calls her two minutes after she sends it.

* * *

The summer before senior year, Ellie, Marco, Dylan, Paige, and Craig all decide to get a beach house together for a week. Paige is put in charge of choosing the location.

"Ok, hun, I've got it narrowed down to the final two. Help me decide."

Ellie abandons her search for leftover chinese food in the refrigerator and goes to join Paige in the living room.

"Behind, door number one, we have Wasaga. Now, it's cheaper, but --"

"No." Her mouth is dry and her heart has just plummeted into her stomach.

"El, I didn't even --"

"No. We'll go to the other one." She stands up and nearly sprints to her room.

Let Marco explain.

* * *

The place they end up going is on a remote lake. So remote, in fact, that none of their cell phones get service.

Craig says it's God's way of telling them to relax and ignore the outside world for a week. Paige says that if the electricity doesn't work, she's killing someone.

The electricity is ok.

They swim, they go in the hot tub, they build campfires, and they go through all six bags of marshmallows they brought.

Halfway through the drive home, Ellie turns on her phone to see what she missed.

She has forty seven new messages.

* * *

It was a roadside bomb, and four other men died.

The day of the funeral, her mom throws up on her when she tries to pull her off the couch.

She pretends she doesn't notice Marco trying to be discreet as he takes all the razors and kitchen knives and hides them in his bedroom.

When he's done, he comes into her room and crawls into her bed.

She doesn't talk and he doesn't talk and she cries into his chest, only falling asleep when birds are starting to chirp outside.

She dreams of white beaches littered with sandcastles and cigarette burns on her shoulders.

* * *

Four days pass, and she's able to function again. She can take a shower. She can go to class. She can chew food and comb her hair and speak without bursting into sobs.

Marco has donated all of the flowers to a hospital, and left the cards in a neat stack on the table. She writes neat, clinical thank you notes, the tremble in her hands mostly contained.

Three quarters of the way through the stack, she finds the card.

There is no message, only the "to" and "from" filled out. It is the kind of card that comes with a standard bouquet of flowers, cheap paper with a shiny gold border.

To: Ellie Nash.

From.

From: Sean Cameron.

* * *

Her mom doesn't come to graduation.

To be fair, she probably doesn't know that it's Ellie's graduation. Or what day of the week it is.

Again, she and Marco, Paige and Alex don their blue robes together. In the audience, there is Jay and there is Dylan and there is Ash and Jimmy and Craig and Spinner. She hugs her friends and clutches her diploma.

She is twenty two years old, and she hopes she and the world are ready for each other.

* * *

Six months into her first job, she is driving through a neighborhood in Toronto that she doesn't really know, trying to find the tailor that Paige swears she can't live without. Journalism requires business suits, and no suit she wears ever seems to hang correctly on Ellie. Ellie's amazed that Paige has let her go this long without commenting on the hemming on her pants.

She squints through the windshield, trying to read a street name and suddenly there's a BANG and the whole car shakes. Ellie screams and slams on the brake. Her heart pounds as she cuts the engine and gets out of the car.

Her front passenger side tire has been ripped in half by the largest piece of broken glass she's ever seen.

She's prepared, of course. Thanks to Dylan's insistence, she has a spare tire and a tire jack in her trunk.

Problem is, she has no idea how to use them.

* * *

Apparently, the universe doesn't completely hate her, because at the end of the block there's an auto shop. Ellie walks in, checking out the magazine selection in the little waiting area. For all she knows, she'll be here awhile. She rings the bell on the counter. She hears a muffled shout of "Just a minute" and starts to dig around in her purse for her wallet, wondering how much this little inconvenience is going to cost her.

"Sorry about the wait. How can I -- Ellie?"

Scratch that. The universe utterly and completely fucking hates her.

* * *

So he really did go through with that whole bettering his life to start his own business thing.

Huh.

She rereads the same page of Field and Stream twenty-eight times. There hadn't been a ring on his finger.

Not that that meant anything, of course. He could still --

And it's not like she had been looking to see whether or not he had a ring. She just noticed, that's all.

Crap.

* * *

"Ok, you're all set." He comes out wiping his (ringless) hands on a towel. She stands up.

"Ok, um, I think with the tow and everything, you'll have to put it on two credit cards, but they won't be declined, I promise."

He shakes his head. "Don't worry about it."

"Sean, come on. You just spent like an hour fixing my car. Let me pay you."

He fumbles with the rag a little bit. "It's on the house, El, ok?"

"Well, thank you, then. If you really won't take my money. Thank you."

"Yeah." They stand there for a minute. She takes a deep breath.

"And, um, thank you for the flowers. It -- that meant a lot."

"Yeah. I was -- uh, I was gonna come. To the funeral. But I didn't know..." He leaves his sentence hanging, and she doesn't know, either, but she understands.

"Well, I should get going."

"Oh. Right." He hands over her keys. "That new tire I put on will last you 25,000 at least."

"Thanks. See you around, Sean."

She almost makes it out the door before he asks her if maybe sometime she'd want to have dinner. Just to -- just to catch up, and stuff.

She can't wipe the stupid smile off her face during her entire drive home.

* * *

They're supposed to go out on that Thursday.

By now, she should know what that means. She should've known that this was going to happen. She should've fucking known.

* * *

Head trauma is listed as the official cause of death, but the head trauma probably wouldn't have occurred if her blood alcohol level hadn't been .21, causing her to fall down the stairs.

The funeral director suggests that a closed casket would be in everyone's best interest.

Marco holds her hair while she vomits until her throat is raw with bile.

* * *

The reception is full of people Ellie barely knows. She sips the water that Alex has brought her, and wonders if Marco will buy her rubber bands. Abruptly, she stands up. Jay, who has been put in charge of staying with her for a few minutes, immediately rises.

"Ellie?" Tentatively, he places a hand on her shoulder. "You ok? You need something?"

"I just --" she quickly wipes away a tear, and sets her water down on a nearby table. "I need to go see the grave. By myself." She starts to walk across the room towards the door.

"Ellie, wait." Jay tries to grab her arm, but she brushes him away and ducks into a crowd of people, momentarily losing him. He catches up to her as she's unlocking her car.

"Ellie, hold on. I don't think you should be alone."

"Jay, I'm fine. Seriously." She realizes that the tears streaming down her cheeks aren't really backing her up. "Please, I just want to sit there for a few minutes. With my mom and dad." She's full on crying now, and Jay is looking more distressed than Ellie's ever seen him.

"Ellie... how about I drive, ok? And then I can wait for you and drive you back."

She doesn't nod or stop crying, but she hands him the keys.

* * *

By the time she's convinced him to go drive around for half an hour while she does her thing, the tears have temporarily dried up. There's a slight breeze in the air, and the ground is dry enough that she can sit down. She makes sure to sit far back enough that she's not on top of the coffins. After a few minutes, she lies back on the grass and closes her eyes.

She can't remember hearing footsteps, but she isn't surprised when some time later, she feels a warm length of someone's arm pressed up against hers. She's even less surprised when she feels someone's hand link with her own.

* * *

She doesn't want to talk about it, so they don't.

They sit in his apartment, and they talk about his arrest and how close he came to going to jail. They talk about his brief relationship with Emma, and his other brief relationship with Emma, and his other brief relationship with Emma. They talk about Jay and Alex, and about the difficulties faced when attempting to fix a carburetor. They talk about how the position of journalist is being redefined with the emergence of new technology.

After awhile, they don't talk anymore.

He lets her get as far as tugging at the hem of his shirt, and then he gently pulls her hands away.

"Ellie --"

She kisses his shoulder.

"Ellie, I can't let you do this. You don't want to do this."

"I do," she mumbles into the hollow of his throat, trying to break her hands free of his grasp.

"Ellie," he says again, and she ignores him, even has she starts to feel the sobs rising in her throat.

He begins to run his fingertips over her scars, and even as she cries in his arms, she silently curses him for knowing her breaking point so well.

* * *

Two months later, her hands again tug at the hem of his shirt.

He doesn't stop her.

* * *

Six months after that, they sign a twelve month lease in Marco and Dylan's building.

When Sean suggests that they christen all the rooms, Ellie is already unbuttoning her jeans.

* * *

In between, somewhere, is The Talk.

There's Wasaga and there's her rejecting him and there's Emma, again, and Rick and Tracker and her mom and her dad and the pink lines on her arms.

She kisses his eyelids, believing that his scars lie hidden behind them. He envelops her hands within his own, pressing her fingers against his closed lips.

Gradually, over the weeks and months, Talking turns into talking.

The package of rubber bands remains in the desk drawer, unopened.

* * *

The next summer, they rent another beach house, this time bringing Jay and Alex along as well.

Ellie lets the ocean waves wash over her, Sean's hand linked with her own, and thinks that Wasaga has never looked so beautiful.

* * *

_Show me your scars__  
__And I'll show you mine__  
__Some may not heal__  
__Will that be alright?__  
__If our pasts collide__  
__And they die today__  
__Will that be a scar__  
__That will never fade?_

Scars by Molly's Yes


End file.
